


Beth Quinn, Two and a Half Months Later

by MissIzzy



Series: Walking Behind With a Bucket [44]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Ficlet, Gen, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-10
Updated: 2019-03-10
Packaged: 2019-11-14 23:10:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18061994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissIzzy/pseuds/MissIzzy
Summary: Taking the refugees across a final river.





	Beth Quinn, Two and a Half Months Later

Though the refugees are crowded in under the boat’s floorboards, Georges is letting the sound of his singing travel out far enough for Beth to hear it at the tiller. She’s very, very grateful for that.

It could be worse. It’s the second time this boat’s flake of an owner proved unavailable to take the people across himself, so she’s no longer someone who hasn’t sailed a boat since she was eighteen. And it’s warm enough a night the wind isn’t making her old bullet wound ache this time. Yet.

But she expected to be well on her way home now. Now she won’t be back before morning. Rex will wake up wondering where she is, maybe get scared the worst has happened and he’s been left completely alone in the world, and she dares not call either him or the conductor she had to leave him in the care of.

She’s hoping this’ll be the last group of fugitives, at least. From their accents, they must come from pretty far down south, and apparently the fallout from that epic flight of Daisy Johnson from New Jersey with somewhere between six and twenty people floating in the air after her had spooked their conductor in St. Louis so badly he’d insisted they stay there for days before going back on the move.

Below, Georges starts to sing,  _Sometimes I feel like a motherless child, sometimes I feel like a motherless child, sometimes I feel like a motherless child, a long ways from home._  The wind gets a little stronger; listening gets just a little harder. Beth anxiously checks the time, and the GPS. For probably convoluted political reasons, Canada hasn’t said publically about taking these people in, and they’re receiving them at an uninhabited location upstream, not far from where the river empties into Lake St. Clair.

She heads towards the lights at first, though. With her only able to risk the glow of her phone, even in Canadian waters, they’re all she can see of the far shore. Even so, when she gets closer, her hand strays towards the shotgun she’s hoped she won’t have to use every time she’s taken a group of refugees to the riverbank.

(To think, she once hoped she’d never have to fire a gun in her life, outside a firing range.)

There’s one moment she actually does think she saw something move in the river’s dark waters. The next, she was certain it had been her mind playing tricks on her, but that just made her all the more anxious, wanting to have done with this.

As she turns away and towards the north, she increases the boat’s speed. She wishes the motor wasn’t quite so loud. Though the whir and the wind, her ears seek out and cling the song from below. Georges is now singing a song about the stars. When she looks out and up at the sky, Beth can see only some of them. Polaris is among them, though. The other time she did this, things were completely overcast.

She remembers nights on the road, looking up at the stars. Also taking Rex out to see them when he was younger, but they’ve never impressed him much. Her mother used to roll her eyes.

Lately when she sees them, she often wonders where her old bandmates are, if they lived or died. She’s thought about Frank, too, and others people she’s only briefly met. There are so many people who have just passed through her life, now. She’ll never even know what will become of the people hidden below, once they pass out of her charge.

And in the end, it isn’t even her who takes them all the way to shore. Instead, when she gets closer to the designated drop-off point, she once again sees movement in the water, and this time, there’s no doubt. It’s close enough she can hope for the best, but still she takes hold of the shotgun. She’s suddenly terribly afraid it’ll be someone who’ll claim that they’ll take her refugees safely to shore, and then won’t. They’ve got a pair of coded phrases, but someone could’ve found those out.

But her fears dispel when, as the boats draw within shouting range and Georges’ singing finally stops (she’ll offer him some water when they get out; she’s pretty sure his superpowers are all that kept him from going hoarse), the voice that calls out, “Show me that stream…” is one she recognizes-it seems she’s seeing one man again, after all.

“Called the river Jordan.” She goes ahead and sings it back, and then smiles as the young black man she knows only as Roman projects enough illumination from his hands to stretch across their boats. “Scotty bailed on us,” she calls as she pulls up alongside him, “but he left the boat on hand, at least.”

They’ve been using that phrase throughout the network, apparently, and the refugees, recognizing it, start emerging from below the floorboards. The youngest of them, who’s said she turned eleven in St. Louis, scrambles out first, her mother’s admonishing words falling on deaf ears, exclaiming, “Wow, that’s some awesome light!”

“It is,” Beth agrees, and even some of the adults look impressed as they clamber their way out. Still, she thinks, he can’t risk keeping it up long.


End file.
